Monthly Archives: December 2016

I would definitely recommend this video to watch. I found it very interesting to watch, and the information I learnt truly amazed me. So please watch this video if you have time!

Blue: Facts

Red: Understandings

Green: Questions

This video was about solar system and the size/scale of it. Here’s a quote explaining what it’s like to see Earth in space.

“As we got farther and farther away, the Earth diminished in size. Finally it shrank to the size of a marble, the most beautiful marble you can imagine… seeing this can change a man.” James Irwin Apollo 15. Who did it changed? Did they do anything about it?

See, the actual size of planets are microscopic, on a piece of paper you can’t see them. But it’s the opposite with the distance from the sun to the moon, it’s actually way bigger than what we think it is.

So if we can’t see how big the solar system is, how can we know? Well, the only way to see the actual size of the solar system is to build it.

In the black rye desert, Alex Gorosh and Wylie Overstreet set up camp and in 36 hours they measure distances, trace out orbits and set up a time lap video (which had to be shot from up on top of a nearby mountain). When the time lap had finished, they would light up a marble on a stand where a planet is support to be. When it was lighten, you could see how big the solar system actually is (from the lines/orbit). Here is what the planets ended up being on the scale:

(Smallest to biggest)

Mercury was 68 m/224 feet.

Venus 120 m/447 feet

Earth 176 m/579 feet

Mars (actually has robots on this planet) 269 m/881 feet

Jupiter 0.92 km/0.51 mi

Saturn 1.7 km/1.1 mi

Uranus- 3.4 km/2.1 mi

Neptune (the edge of the solar system)- 5.6 km /3.5 mi

By the planet Jupiter, the orbits were becoming giant! Neptune’s was the biggest out of all of the planets, and it was ginormous. You can see how big all of the orbits were (they were HUGE) in the video (at the top of the page-link, from 2.20 min to 4.33 min).

To prove that they had done this correctly, they decided to test this scale with the sun. They tested by seeing whether the sun they created (the size at sunrise) is the same size as the actual one at sunrise. It was, so they were correct. The sun was a meter and a half on the scale

There are 24 people out of billions who have seen the full circle of earth. Why only 24?

Earth’s orbit doesn’t rise, it curves. When you head on out to the moon, the horizon slowly curves around and then you’re looking at something that’s very strange yet very familiar. Earth. If you’re in space and you’re looking out at Earth, you can put your thumb up and can hide Earth.

I now understand actually how huge solar system is, and how big the planets actually are.

This video was about how ancient Greeks thought about our solar system, galaxy and the cosmos, and how their ideas grew.

The ancient Greeks used to believe that the sun and the stars moved around earth for this reason, because earth was in the centre of the solar system. Also, they believed that it had to be the stars and the sun moving (not earth), for if earth was moving we would feel it.How did the ancient Greeks even know about space? At the time, these assumptions was actually a simple mistake to be made. So since they thought this, they drew the solar system with earth in the centre, the moon opposite it and then the sun opposite the moon. Which leaves the stars, which would be rotating around earth in a circle. I understand how beliefs passed down for centuries can really affect what you believe, and how it’s not always the correct assumption.

But one day they found that something didn’t move in a circle but back and forth, so the Greeks had to change the model. Or course they hadn’t worked out what that thing was, but they decided to give it a shot. Astronomers developed more complex models, with happened to have more circles in them. Finally, one day a better model than any was created. This model the astronomers put the sun in the middle of our solar system (which is where it actually belongs).

This model led them to finding out what was the thing that went back and forth across the night sky. This thing was a planet, and it was called Mars.

So after all of this discovery and new information, they should have a pretty good representation… Actually no. At this point in time, they went even close. It wasn’t until Galileo Galilei built the first telescope that they actually got somewhere.When was the first telescope built? It showed things like how Jupiter has four moons.

But this telescope also showed everyone what the real representation of our solar system is.

So now, the current model shows all the planets orbiting around the sun. It also shows that if the sun and stars move across the sky, then the earth must be rotating to make them move.

Questions Answers:

The first telescope made was built in 1608 by a German-Dutch lens maker, who went by the name Hans Lippershey.

The knowledge of space was given to them by other cultures. Chinese Astronomers, Mesopotamian and Zoroastrian astronomers/astrologers and even Indian Vedas mainly helped out the Greeks with their knowledge. Most of the knowledge though was given when Alexander the Great conquered the region, in 331 BCE.